The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-29)

4 V2 The Sunday Times May 29, 2022

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would go to her family
directly, as well as the media,
if they did not investigate
more than 30 cases he had
concerns about at the time.
“The managers had no
choice,” Calvert said. “They
had to agree to an audit.”
The same year, an external
auditor looked at six out of 30
cases supplied by coroner’s
officers at the service. The
report confirmed Calvert’s
claims: documents were
altered, suppressed and
concealed from the families
of patients who had died
during 999 call-outs.
Last week, The Sunday
Times revealed how service
managers had altered files to
hide staff mistakes from
coroners and grieving
families. In one case, a 62-

→Continued from page 1

era, said. “The NRA starts giving its mem-

bers a sense that the world is a pitiless

war of all against all, and you’d better be

ready to come out on top.”

The NRA remains a hugely influential

organisation and spends tens of millions

in each election cycle backing pro-gun

candidates. But its power does not come

out of nowhere. In a poll conducted by

YouGov just before the shooting in

Uvalde, 54 per cent of Americans said

they wanted laws covering the sale of

guns to be made more strict. That means

46 per cent disagreed.

America’s attachment to its guns

reaches back well beyond contemporary

culture wars. One historian, Pamela

Haag, points to the powerful advertising

campaigns run by gun manufacturers

such as Colt and Winchester in the early

20th century. “One answer to the ques-

tion of why Americans love guns is simply

that the gun industry invited us to,” she

wrote in The Gunning of America, dis-

missing the idea that violent 19th-century

frontier culture must bear responsibility.

For Dave Cullen, the author of Colum-

bine, a book about the 1999 high school

massacre, the NRA’s opponents got off on

the wrong foot 50 years ago. “The dumb-

est thing that movement ever did was

labelling their movement ‘gun control’,”

he said. “Who the hell wants to be con-

trolled? How do you think people on the

other side reacted to that? This issue has

been so divisive partly because it was

framed so divisively a long time ago.”

But liberals who blame NRA lobbying,

gun advertising or their own political

missteps for the primacy of guns in Amer-

ica often underestimate the powerful his-

torical forces that have shaped American

culture. In First Freedom: A Ride Through

Guns can stop massacres, says

Trump in echo of Reagan

Days after the Texas school horror, the ex-president repeated the Republican mantra that gun control must be opposed

Children run from the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. Calls for gun reform have prompted a defiant response from NRA allies such as Donald Trump, below

PETE LUNA/UVALDE LEADER-NEWS/REUTERS

Payouts

for blood

scandal

victims

Victims of the contaminated

blood scandal are due to

receive payouts from the

government.

Ministers are preparing to

accept that there is a “strong

moral case” for a taxpayer-

funded scheme to

compensate those affected by

the worst treatment disaster

in NHS history.

A Cabinet Office document

circulated among ministers

says an arm’s-length body will

be set up to administer the

funds, which could run into

hundreds of millions of

pounds.

The move, which will be

announced within weeks, will

be the first time that the

government has recognised

the state’s culpability for the

disaster, which led to nearly

3,000 deaths.

Details will be revealed

when the government

responds to a review led by

Sir Robert Francis QC, set up

last year to examine a

possible compensation

framework for the victims

and their families.

The review is expected to

take into account

compensation schemes

implemented in other

countries, including Ireland,

where 5,000 victims have

received more than €1 billion.

The highest individual payout

was €2.69 million.

According to Whitehall

sources, Francis will present

a number of options to the

government and the price for

each varies — although no

formal request for funds has

been made to the Treasury.

Up to 30,000 NHS patients

contracted hepatitis C, HIV

and other deadly diseases

after receiving contaminated

blood-clotting products in the

1970s and 1980s. Victims,

including people with

haemophilia and similar

disorders, are dying at the

rate of one every four days.

Until now, the victims have

been ignored by successive

governments, which have

refused to accept liability,

even though documents

show that health officials

knew of the dangers.

According to the

Haemophilia Society, more

than 400 people infected by

contaminated blood have

died since an inquiry was

announced by Theresa May in

July 2017.

The government has

promised to publish its

compensation plan before

Francis gives evidence to that

inquiry in mid-July. But

campaigners are demanding

immediate interim payments

for victims nearing the end of

their lives.

Kate Burt, the chief

executive of the Haemophilia

Society, said: “People

infected with HIV and

hepatitis C viruses in the

1970s and 1980s have lived

with infection, stigma, anger

and hardship for far too long.

They, and those who care for

them, cannot wait any longer

for the government to honour

its moral obligations.”

Caroline Wheeler

Political Editor

America’s Enduring History with the Gun,

David Harsanyi argues that 18th-century

America was a land where danger was a

constant presence: self-protection was

essential. This sentiment was amplified

by the revolutionary war with Britain and

sustained by the demands of controlling

four million African-American slaves

across the south until the Civil War.

“The idea of a civilian militia providing

protection against invaders was strongly

held at the country’s founding, even if the

actual role of militias in protecting the

country tended to be exaggerated,” said

Eric Ruben, a law professor at Southern

Methodist University. “There were laws

requiring white men of military age to

have their own musket and keep it in

good working order for musters.”

But isn’t that all ancient history? Why

are conservatives still so attached to laws

put in place to regulate militia activity in

the 18th century? For gun advocates such

as Harsanyi, much of what remains spe-

cial about America is wrapped up in the

right to bear arms. American ingenuity,

self-reliance, independence of spirit and

innovation are all rooted in this “first

freedom”. To separate Americans from

their guns would be to divorce them from

their most cherished right of all: liberty.

It’s not an argument that carries much

weight with Europeans, or indeed most

Democrats, who overwhelmingly sup-

port stricter gun laws. But Trump knows

exactly what his base wants to hear. No

matter what classroom tragedies are to

come, America’s long and stormy love

affair with the gun is unlikely to end any

time soon.

America just keeps on killing its kids,

Piers Morgan, page 23

Former coroner’s

officer Paul

Calvert. Far left

and centre,

Peter Coates

and Norman

Thompson

died while

waiting for an

ambulance.

Left, Quinn

Evie Beadle

JOSH

GLANCY

year-old man died after his

oxygen machine cut out. NHS

leaders withheld evidence

that would have explained a

34-minute delay was caused

by an ambulance crew being

unable to operate the

ambulance bay’s gates. The

call went to a second crew

further away, which stopped

off for petrol on the way to his

house, despite the ambulance

having enough fuel to make

the journey. By the time they

arrived, he had suffocated.

Calvert said the

manipulation of evidence

relating to the deaths of

people who had called 999

was a “daily occurrence”.

He said he once spoke to a

“crying” member of female

staff who had been tasked

with altering background

investigation reports when

complaints came in from

families. “The malpractice

was on a daily basis,” he said.

“Concealing, destroying, not

supplying things when we

should be. It would happen

every day. I couldn’t keep up

with it.”

He called one of the people

with responsibility for the

coroner’s officers “Captain

Cover-up”. “He was like a

double agent for the service,”

Calvert said. “He would listen

to you, agree, and then come

back from meetings with the

NHS bosses with a completely

different story. If something

needed covering up, he was

your man.”

Calvert provided the police

and external auditors with

evidence of senior

paramedics being instructed

to order their juniors to make

damning witness statements

“disappear”.

One paramedic told him

bosses had ordered him to get

a junior member of staff to

change their witness

negative impact upon your

health and wellbeing”. She

thanked him for his

“unwavering desire” to help

the service fulfil its legal

duties, and laid out changes

she had made as a result of his

complaints.

But Calvert said nothing

had changed at the service up

to the point he walked out of

headquarters on July 8 last

year. This year, he and a

colleague were offered non-

disclosure agreements.

Calvert refused to sign

because of the “gagging”

clause that would have

prevented further disclosures

to police and the Care Quality

Commission.

Last week, families

whose loved ones died

demanded the ambulance

trust tell the full truth. Nigel

Mitchell, 62, lost his wife Gill,

63, after she suffered a heart

attack in October. Mitchell

called 999 and told the

operator his wife needed

urgent assistance. He asked

for a helicopter.

“Their first retort was, ‘We

don’t just get the helicopter

for anybody’,” he said. He

drove her to a nearby village

with a defibrillator.

By the time help arrived —

four ambulances and a

helicopter — it was too late.

He believes the call was not

prioritised and wants the

NEAS to come clean.

“It’s their duty to tell the

families that they’ve made a

balls-up,” he said. “That’s the

least they could do, isn’t it? If

they have any bit of decency

left in their souls, they would

do that.”

Ray said: “Utmost in our

minds are the families

affected and we unreservedly

apologise for the distress we

have caused to them.

“We had a number of

issues, dating back to 2019,

which meant we needed to

fully review and revise our

reporting mechanisms.” She

said the concerns had been

acted upon and she was

confident the system now in

place was “robust”.

In May 1983, two years after he was shot

and nearly killed in an assassination

attempt, President Reagan addressed the

annual convention of the National Rifle

Association in Phoenix, Arizona.

In a 33-minute speech, he vowed to

“never disarm any American who seeks

to protect his or her family from fear and

harm”. Reagan also emphasised the

importance of the Second Amendment to

the US constitution, the right to bear

arms, which he described as “every

American’s birthright”.

On Friday night in Houston, Donald

Trump gave a strikingly similar oration at

this year’s NRA convention. He was

speaking only three days after 19 children

and two teachers were massacred in a

school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, only

300 miles away. As the nation mourned

and Democrats issued furious calls for

gun control, the former president struck

a defiant tone.

“Defending our Second Amendment is

about defending law, order and life,”

Trump told a cheering crowd, headlining

a conference that attracted as many as

55,000 visitors. Echoing Reagan, Trump

continued: “We know that as law-and-

order conservatives, we have no higher

goal than to reduce violent crime by the

greatest degree possible.”

The way to do this was not with “gro-

tesque” calls for fresh restrictions on gun

ownership in the aftermath of the trag-

edy. It was with more guns because “the

existence of evil is one of the very best

reasons to arm law-abiding citizens”.

Why does America stand apart on this

issue? Why do politicians like Reagan and

Trump, former presidents of an

advanced country, feel the need to genu-

flect before the idea of ordinary individu-

als accessing weapons of war? Of all the

many forms of American exceptionalism

— religious, military and sporting — it is

their gun culture that most puzzles the

rest of the world.

Recent estimates suggest there are

nearly 400 million guns in civilian hands

in America, more than 120 per 100 peo-

ple, the highest figure in the world. For

comparison, England and Wales have

fewer than two million, not quite five fire-

arms per 100 people. School shootings

are only the most horrifying example of

the toll: in 2020 alone, more than 45,

Americans were killed by guns, either

through murder or suicide, more than

any other year on record. And gun own-

ership continues to rise.

How did America end up in this

extraordinary place, bristling with guns

and unable — or unwilling — to do any-

thing about it? For Democrats, much of

the blame lies with the NRA itself.

Before entering politics, Trump was a

supporter of a ban on assault weapons,

with no known enthusiasm for firearms.

But in 2015, running for president, he

said that the answer to mass shootings

was more guns and promised to end all

gun-free zones. The NRA endorsed him in

2016 and donated more than $30 million

to his campaign.

Trump’s performance in Houston was

yet another example of the chokehold

that the gun lobby has had over conserva-

tive politics in America since the Reagan

era. It prevents any meaningful gun

reform, allowing disturbed teenagers like

18-year-old Salvador Ramos to legally

purchase the assault weapon that he used

to attack Robb Elementary School.

Set up in 1871, in the aftermath of the

American Civil War, the NRA’s original

purpose was to improve marksmanship

and gun safety, both of which had been

deemed lacking in the conflict. For dec-

ades it was a fairly modest organisation

that did not play a significant political

role. That began to change in the 1960s,

as violence on America’s streets and a

rise in vigilantism led to heightened inter-

est in gun ownership.

A tougher pro-gun conservative fac-

tion began to emerge within the NRA,

whose magazine, American Rifleman,

started publishing a column called The

Armed Citizen, which still runs today and

is sponsored by the gun manufacturer

Smith & Wesson. This faction was partic-

ularly focused on the Second Amend-

ment, which states that the “right of the

people to keep and bear arms shall not be

infringed”.

In 1975, the NRA introduced political

lobbying and donations to candidates. In

1977, at the group’s annual convention,

Harlon “Bullethead” Carter (so-called

because of the shape of his head) led “the

revolt at Cincinnati”, which allowed the

harder-line Second Amendment faction

to take control of the NRA. In 1980, the

organisation made its first presidential

endorsement: Ronald Reagan, a man

rumoured to carry his own sidearm. As

president, his warnings against govern-

ment overreach aligned neatly with the

NRA’s own view of the right to bear arms

against tyranny.

“From this point the NRA becomes

more and more an organisation that

stokes the fear rather than salves the

fear,” Rick Perlstein, a historian of the

The NRA backed

Trump with more

than $30 million

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Ambulance

bosses

behaved

just like

criminals

statement to scrub blunders

during an emergency call.

Calvert complained he was

being bullied by managers

who were telling him to keep

quiet. The service’s chief

executive, Helen Ray, who

earns £150,000 a year, wrote

to him in May 2020: “It was

evident that you and your

colleagues have attempted to

raise your concerns on more

than one occasion from April

to June 2019.” Ray

acknowledged his

whistleblowing had “had a

PHOTOMONTAGE: JAMES COWEN